If a nanny government had flourished in the republic, nowhere was it more active than among its youths. For a small country with no natural resources, they are its top assets, so a lot of work has been put into them.

Walk through the miles of underground shopping arcades of Orchard Road on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see its result.

Y-generation Singapore can be seen: confident, Internet-savvy and wearing branded shirts and shoes, with the latest mobile phones around their necks.

About two-thirds are tertiary educated, many studying engineering, science or IT and a host of other courses.

Whenever a small group of housewives gather, the talk will likely converge on their children’s education.

During the recent peak unemployment, many hard-pressed parents were cracking their heads to send their jobless children for post-graduate studies.

In the city centre, teens in school uniforms can be seen eating in expensive US, Thai or Japanese outlets, seemingly unbothered by the pricey menus. It’s not unusual to encounter college students enjoying an occasional glass of wine. Generation Y lives in relative style in a cabled city and attends a school that resembles a small university, sharing a computer with one or two other classmates.

These youths are beginning to exert a strong influence on politics and economics. They will decide what Singapore will become in 10 to15 years’ time.

They are studying under a new education system that has changed dramatically in the past three years. There is less cramming for exam.

Today, entry into university no longer relies fully on “A” results; project work makes for 15% of the criterion.

In a few cases, a mediocre student with exceptional non-academic ability in sports, music or art is admitted.

The changes are largely felt from primary schools, some of which have recruited a new breed of foreign-trained teachers and principals who are encouraged to do unconventional things.

One example is Edgefield, a new suburban primary school that doesn’t even belong to the premium rank.

While students elsewhere have barely mastered the alphabet, nine-year-old Dominique is already a manager of her school cafe.

Some 40 of her Primary 3 classmates are operating the business of selling soft drinks (19 types) and ice-cream. Dominique was elected CEO (she doesn’t understand what the word means), working with four classmate-managers for finance, inventory, operations and marketing.

They learn how to source the most popular products at the cheapest price in order to turn a profit. The classmates take turns to work as apron-wearing waiters and cashiers.

It is an enjoyable hands-on lesson about business, experimenting with life at an early age.

There are others with different projects but the objective is the same: To allow children to learn without textbooks, work on their own ideas and discourage uniformity in education.

Another school, River Valley Primary, actively promotes artistic talent, displaying works by students along the corridors. The school band, Chinese dance troupe, school choir and rhythmic gymnastics team have all won awards.

One produced a chess master, another came up with a golf champion and a third was proud of its national winners in Malay dance and choir.

At upper levels, students are designing advertising campaigns to “sell” their junior colleges to parents and attract students. A group recently held a seminar to brainstorm ideas on raising the city’s birth rate.

Singapore has a sports school and, by January, a sports junior college and an arts school (in 2007).

In his first, three-hour address to the nation, new Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spent much of it appealing to the youths to join him in shaping the country’s future.

He promised them a more open society. After so many decades of strong control, however, most of his listeners have reacted to it with healthy cynicism, preferring to judge Lee’s action.

Their biggest complaint is that the authorities have an outdated untrusting view of their maturity. An important barometer: Singapore’s legal age to define an adult is 21.

The majority of youths find it unacceptable that they have to serve national service at 18 and to fight for the nation when they are not allowed to, among other things, vote or stand as a candidate in an election, drive a car, watch an R (A) movie, drink or buy alcohol or be legally employed.

In a straw poll by the New Paper, some 35 out of 50 youths (aged 21 or below) say Singapore’s legal adult age should be lowered to between 18 and 20. About three-quarters say it should be 18 years old.

(There are also protections such as lighter punishment for wrongdoings for juveniles.)

In the same study, the newspaper said that among older Singaporeans, however, the majority (27 out of 50) prefer to keep the legal age at 21.

“Teenagers nowadays mature and develop faster than their parents,” argued one teenager.

If you treat someone like a child, you can’t expect him to behave like an adult, said another.

Redefining the legal age of adulthood is important with the invitation for youths to contribute to shape the nation’s future.

Lowering it – as many observers expect will happen – may contribute to a nation’s competitiveness. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, it stands at 20.

By and large, Singapore youths are not wild, drunks, drug addicts or criminals, although such problems exist in scattered numbers.

The problem of Singapore’s Y-generation, like in other developed countries, is its small number. The birth rate here is one of lowest in the world.

Another is a rising trend of migration. Surveys show more of them favour moving to the West.

Weaknesses there are. Spoilt by affluence and lack of hardship, many youths may be ill prepared to meet the competition from their peers from leaner, hungrier countries.

For the older generation, there’s another worry.

Living at the crossroads of East and West and exposed to the pull of outside influence, Generation Y is steadily losing its Asian characteristics and even national bond. .

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com (e-mail: cnseah2000@ littlespeck.com )

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